Underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) are the kind of wireless sensor networks which is deployed in an underwater environment with the help of physical sensors. UWSN has applications in different fields like the management of disasters, and navigating the underwater environment and marine species. The nodes present in the UWSN do not have an inbuilt battery, so the available energy sources must be used effectively. To retain energy efficiency in UWSN, effective clustering and routing protocols must be utilized in the UWSN environment. But, the cluster-based routing approaches are effective only for conventional wireless sensor networks. Moreover, the problem related to void hole occurs from sensor node and enhances energy dissipation which helps to minimize the life span of UWSN. So, the research proposed multi-objective sand cat swarm optimization (M-SCSO) for the selection of optimistic cluster heads (CH) and provides a better routing path for the transmission of data without a void hole problem. The parameters such as distance between neighbouring nodes, distance between base station and cluster head, residual energy, and node degree are considered while selecting optimistic CHs using MSCSO. Secondly, energyefficient routing is processed using MSCSO to deliver data packets in the shortest path. The results obtained through experimental validation represent effectiveness of proposed method. The proposed approach obtained a better packet delivery rate (PDR) of 99.32% whereas the existing emperor penguin optimized Q learning achieved PDR of 90%.